Slowly she put out her hand and took the telegram from Mrs. Tanner.... “Governors can’t be telegraphing t’ house off, surely?” she observed, by way of a joke, but nobody laughed, and even in her own ears her voice sounded dull and flat. Her fingers shook as she opened the envelope and took out the slip, and her legs changed again from unbendable boards to those limp bundles of cotton-wool.... It took her some time to take in what the telegram said, and her face held no more expression when she had read it than it had done before. Perhaps she never did read it, if it came to that; not only because of her sight, but because she had no need. The women drew together again, but kept a little aloof, as if they, too, knew what was in the slip, and expressed their respect for the news before it was given out. After the long pause Mrs. Clapham handed the telegram back to Mrs. Tanner, saying “Read it, will you, Maggie?” in the same tone; and Mrs. Tanner took it from her with shaking grip. The others closed about her then, eager and tense, and presently their united voices, hastening or hanging back, spilt the news with its scent of death on the gentle September air. “‘Daughter died this morning. Can you come?’ ... And it’s signed ‘Rawlinson,’” added Mrs. Tanner. “My daughter Tibbie,” Mrs. Clapham remarked, after the second pause; and, halting a little on her lame knee, she went into her cottage and shut the door. PART IV THE TRUMPET CHAPTER I It was the same cottage, and yet not the same; her old home, and yet a place that she hardly knew; but indeed for the first few moments she scarcely so much as saw it. All that it seemed to her just then was a shelter gathered around her in her oncoming grief. The grief had not reached her yet, but it was coming, and coming fast, feeling for her where she stood waiting in the path of its passionate sweep. She was like those who, caught on the sands by the tidal wave, found themselves fixed to the spot by the first sounds of its approach. Sooner or later, however, they always began to run, racing hither and thither, without hope and without goal. It was only she who could not begin to run. All she could do was to stand there, helpless and bound, until that deepest of tides had swung itself over her head. The cottage was small enough, as she knew, far smaller than the House of Dreams, but it did not seem small enough to her now. It fretted her that she could not draw the walls close enough to her on every side. She wanted a place smaller still, darker and closer—more like the grave into which they would put Tibbie. From her post just inside the door she lifted her eyes for the first time, looking around her on all hands for that narrower, darker place....